


Thrown

by dustlines



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel & Sam Winchester Friendship, Castiel (Supernatural) is Not Okay, Castiel and Dean Winchester Have a Profound Bond, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Summer, Swimming, Team Free Will (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2020-06-30 02:52:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19844065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustlines/pseuds/dustlines
Summary: Dean had just wanted to go swimming to escape the summer heat. It was never supposed to end like this, with Castiel shaking so hard he could dislodge the skin from his very bones.Excerpt:With a gutted noise, Castiel breaks the surface of the pool. Water blasts up several meters from both sides of him, spread out across the entire deep end like two massive wings trying desperately to take flight. Dean just barely catches Sam's look of horror before Dean gets slammed backwards, struck by something invisible that feels rather like a brick wall made of lightning.





	Thrown

**Author's Note:**

> CW: flashbacks of Castiel remembering what it was like to drown.

* * *

Every now and then, even Dean thinks it's a good idea to take a day off, especially when the sun is beating down as warmly as it is today. He feels loose and happy, his entire body submerged below the sparkling blue water of the deep end while his brother kicks around as a rippling, dark shadow to his left. The world is simple at the bottom of a pool, cool and serene, chlorine gently cleaning his skin and all sounds gently hushed. The only thing Dean has to worry about is his next breath, but he has plenty of time before that could concern him.  
  
He shuts his eyes, leaning back and letting himself rise, belly first, to the surface. When he gets there, a splash of bubbles flows from his mouth and the sunlight gets in his eyes, bright white and harsh. He tips to float vertically, arms and legs kicking to keep his nose above water. Seconds later, a shadow passes over his body, blissfully taking from him the heat of the sun.  
  
"Dean." Castiel stands with perfect posture at the pool's edge, only his chin lowered to watch Dean swim closer to him. He wears his trenchcoat over a modest, khaki pair of swim trunks, both articles of clothing as dry as the desert sand. The rest of his clothes are meticulously folded and pressed against Dean's clothes in Dean's duffle bag, which is currently slung beneath a big red umbrella a short distance away from the water. "When are we leaving?"  
  
"Leaving?" Dean flicks a few droplets at Castiel's bare feet, finding it hilarious how Castiel takes an unsteady step backwards, as though the water had personally offended him. "Cas, we barely just got here!"  
  
"I know this." Castiel swallows visibly, his hands lightly curled at his sides. "Even so, I want to be elsewhere."  
  
"You're just saying that because you haven't gotten in yet." Dean grips the cement edge beneath Castiel's feet, his toes scraping underwater against the pool wall. "C'mon, Cas, what gives? You said you needed some time off."  
  
"Yes." Castiel's jaw flexes as he looks to the left, apparently not wanting to remember this particular confession. "Perhaps I was in error. This is not helping."  
  
"I'm telling you, Cas, you couldn't ask for a better day than this. The water is _perfect_." He pushes off from the ledge, floating slowly backwards on a wave of cool relief. "You can swim, can't you?"  
  
"I can swim." Castiel's gaze seems caught to his left, where a family of three small children splash happily about in the shallow side of the pool. The children are dueling with neon-colored pool snakes, slapping the water and giggling loudly under the sunlight. They keep dunking each other, heads bobbing under and then back above the water with shrieks of laughter. Their father, who is apparently also the lifeguard here, sits in a plastic beach chair by the edge, ever watchful despite the book held in his hands.  
  
"Well, then what's the problem?" Out of the corner of his eye, Dean notices Sam pulling himself from the deep side of the pool, water dripping from his hair. As he begins walking towards Castiel, he catches Dean's eye, and they share a momentary grin. Dean can definitely see where this is going, and he spins in the water to distract Castiel. To the angel, Dean says, "Afraid of getting your feathers wet?"  
  
Castiel looks back into the water, focused sharply on Dean as Sam's shadow moves closer to him. "You don't understand." Castiel waves a hand over the water, his brow lowered in mild exasperation. "I was in water when—"  
  
Playfully, Sam pushes him forward. The angel's eyes widen comically for half a second before he collides with the water, arms scrambling as if to grab a ledge that doesn't appear. Sam starts laughing, but Dean doesn't really hear it because suddenly Castiel is jerking about underwater, and all of Dean's instincts start screaming. Where there was calm and peace beneath his skin, suddenly there is nothing but war and panic.  
  
With a gutted noise, Castiel breaks the surface. Water blasts up several meters from both sides of him, spread out across the entire deep end like two massive wings trying desperately to take flight. Dean just barely catches Sam's look of horror before Dean gets slammed backwards, struck by something invisible that feels rather like a brick wall made of lightning. He flies distressingly above water for several seconds, only to crash back under with an impact that takes all the breath from his lungs.  
  
Dean shrieks, water surging into his open mouth. His body tumbles out of his control, vision spinning. He instinctively tries to suck in a breath, but his lungs instead convulse around the acid burn of chlorine. He crashes against the pool wall, ribs creaking and a cough exploding from his chest. His entire left side feels like it's being gutted against the concrete, chlorine pouring into a thousand new scrapes. Dizzy and in agony, Dean scrambles to the churning surface, where Cas' invisible wings are still slamming around.  
  
"Cas!" Dean cries, a gurgled noise that gets taken from him when a second, massive wave hits him and he goes under again, smashed hard to the pool floor like a bug against a windshield. Even down here, he can hear Castiel crying out, a hoarse, gasping sound that chills Dean to the bone. Barely able to see, Dean keeps underwater and kicks forward, back and legs so full of pain he can barely move. There is no way he's not going to have a hefty collection of bruises if he gets out of this.  
  
The water bubbling as though boiling, Dean finds Castiel's legs as a thrashing, mindless heap of fear in the center of it all. Dean grabs Cas' ankle, using every ounce of his strength to drag himself up to the smooth center of Castiel's chest. Breaking the surface of the water, he pulls the angel close, Castiel jerking violently against him. Their hair is soaked on both of their heads, scrambled to within an inch of its life.  
  
"Calm down," Dean chokes, "Cas, calm down. Please calm down."  
  
Castiel's arms squeeze around Dean's neck, clinging hard. He's repeating a phrase, teeth chattering, barely audible, although Dean thinks what Castiel is saying might be, "I don't want to drown again."  
  
"Cas, I'm here. I—" Dean's nose clogs with water and suddenly he's underwater again, seeing the sun through a glistening, rocking pane of clear liquid above his head. Bubbles exploding from his mouth, he kicks out, kneeing Castiel in the gut by accident. The angel recoils, and Dean manages to grab his upper arm and pull their heads back above the churning waves. Cas' wings, though they may not be visible, no longer seem to be moving about in terror, but there's still plenty of recoil left over in the water.  
  
Pulling Castiel close to him with one arm, Dean flails his other arm behind him in a fractured butterfly stroke, trying to get back to the ledge.  
  
"SAM!" Dean's call is a little too late, as his backwards stroke makes him collide with his brother, who was already in the water and swimming towards them.  
  
The unweary strength of Sam's arms surrounds them both, a welcome relief with Castiel's panicking weight still dragging him down. All of their legs bang up against each other's a bit until they make it to the edge, Sam's grip a warm, desperate weight around Dean's ribcage. Sam hauls himself out of the water first, and then leans back in to drag Castiel out, Dean helping by pushing up on Castiel's legs from below. The angel clutches Sam's arms with white knuckles, still breathing hard in his now-soaking wet coat.  
  
How could they have forgotten that Castiel once died underwater, suffocating around the black oil of Leviathan bodies in his throat?  
  
"S-Sam." Castiel is shaking so hard even his hair is vibrating.  
  
"Castiel. Oh god." Sam sounds like he's close to tears, blinking rapidly, his hair an obstructing octopus of a mess in front of his eyes. He keeps one hand on Cas' shoulder, even as he reaches with the other to offer to help drag Dean from the churning water. "I'm so, so sorry! I was just — it was supposed to be a joke. I didn't mean to—"  
  
"I'm _fine_ ," Cas chokes, though the terrified, wet rabbit look he's sporting doesn't give him much credibility.  
  
"Dean?" Sam pulls Dean the rest of the way from the water, where Dean collapses on his stomach facedown, too spent to move. "Are you okay?"  
  
"Oh, me?" Dean feels like he might puke, the world still spinning and his back livid with a thousand tiny scratches and bruises. The water draining from his body splashes loudly beneath him, every inch of him feeling way too heavy. The cement is burning his skin, and there's a strong taste of ozone and pool chemicals he can't seem to cough out of his mouth. "I'm peachy."  
  
"There's a kid still—" Sam starts, and Dean waves him off. They can both hear the child's screaming from within the water, and see her spiraling into the deep end.  
  
" _Go_ ," Dean coughs. "Go now!"  
  
Sam doesn't need to be told twice. His bare feet slap against the wet cement as he runs for the edge of the pool closest to the girl, then dives in the drastically reduced water levels with a splash.  
  
Still trying to clear his lungs, Dean coughs against the hot cement beside Castiel. He feels like a beached whale, his body some strange, foreign thing as it gets used to having a regular supply of oxygen again. Beside him, Castiel is shivering with his knees up to his chin, his jaw locked and his eyes somewhere far away. Dean struggles into a sitting position, despite the sting of his torn skin.  
  
"You _idiot_." Dean cups the damp sides of Castiel's neck, feeling the prickle of tiny hairs against his palms as he uses eye contact to help Castiel focus. "You could've told me." Both of them are still coughing up water. "Breathe. That's all. _Breathe_."  
  
Their heartbeats pound inside them both like artillery fire being shot across enemy lines, and Dean tugs on the soggy collar of Castiel's coat to let the angel's head rest on his shoulder while their breathing comes back down. With wide eyes, Dean stares incredulously down the length of Castiel's soaked, coat-covered back, unsure if it's even safe to touch it right now, realizing he sometimes forgets that there are _wings_ there, even if he can't see them.  
  
"Dean?" Castiel breathes, voice so strangled that Dean barely recognizes him as an angel, falling or not. "You're hurt." Numb fingers travel over the scrapes on Dean's sides, slipping to his ribs and then his back, touching spots that make Dean wince in pain. "I _hurt_ you." If it's possible, Castiel sounds even more horrified than he had in the water, his jaw locked like it's made of metal.  
  
"It's not that bad." Deciding, _oh crap, what the hell, how bad could it be_ , Dean tentatively pats Castiel's back. As he does so, a strange, almost static electricity-esque tingle ripples over his fingers through the dampness of the angel's coat, but it doesn't hurt. Dean's palm flattens a little more confidently. "Really. Day of rest, I'll be running marathons again, you'll see."  
  
Beyond where they're clinging together, two of the three kids who had been in the pool are already out of the water and crying, their father sending Dean and Castiel a look of absolute terror. Though the man doesn't seem to know what had happened, enough intelligence sparks in his eyes for it to be obvious he knows Castiel had somehow caused it. The entire pool is about half as full of water as it was before, the waves of that water's escape having shoved back every chair, towel, pool noodle, and giant unbrella against the fence that surrounds the pool enclosure.  
  
"Hey, Cas," Dean says, relieved that Castiel's weirdly tingly back is turned towards the dad's judgmental look. It doesn't seem like it matters, since Castiel's eyes are shut tightly and buried against Dean's neck anyway. "I get it," Dean chokes out, hand carding shakily through Castiel's hair. "No more water, okay? You're not gonna die like that again. No more water."  
  
Sam hauls the third and final kid from the water in the distance, getting her to her lifeguard father. Even with Dean's limited view over the sopping, trenchcoat-covered shoulder shoved up against him, he can read from Sam's posture that the kids are all fine, the worst of Castiel's fight or flight reflex having hit the deep end of the pool and not the shallow side.  
  
His face drenched with guilt and fear, Sam stumbles back towards them. "Guys?" Castiel's eyes creak open when Sam braces a hand against the angel's back, Sam sucking in a startled breath and yanking it away as he is presumably shocked, too. Face settling with determination, though, he puts his hands back down on both Castiel's back and upper arm, and, with Dean's help, begins helping him to his feet. "I think we need to go."  
  
Castiel doesn't say anything, just lets them hold him up as they stand up on shaking legs. Stopping only to snatch their bags from the base of the fence they'd been hurled up against, they vacate the pool before the lifeguard can call the police or whoever the hell else one calls when an angel creates a tsunami in a swimming pool. Castiel sags weakly between them as they stagger through the chain link fence, his head lowered in embarrassment and wings both unseen and still. He seems to be letting off less static now.  
  
"Cas," Dean mutters, his heart pounding against his ribs, "it's really, really okay, alright? Everyone's got a thing. _Everyone_."  
  
"I'm an angel," Castiel sulks, as if that's supposed to make him impervious to everything. "I shouldn't have a _thing_."  
  
"Cas, it's okay."  
  
They file into the Impala, Castiel breathing tightly. Dean gets into the backseat with him, because that's just what you do when your friend has a panic attack that nearly leads to being drowned. Sam starts the car, and, with all the doors shut to seal in the overpowering scent of chlorine, they drive off in a rush.  
  
With a shaking breath of air, Castiel collapses against the back of his seat and stares — just _stares_ — out the front window. "Sometimes," he whispers, after a long moment of silence, "I can't forget the way they felt inside me." He shuts his eyes, swallows. "And it's like they never left."  
  
The world swings past the windows like a spinning dancer, unstoppable, the Impala's wheels rumbling over unsteady pebbles on the ground. Dean hesitates for a moment, surprised that Cas confessed this in front of Sam. He must be feeling really bad, but then, Cas has been a lot more open about what's hurting him lately. Carefully, Dean reaches over to put a hand on Cas' arm, curling his fingers around the wet sleeve of the angel's coat. He knows Sam isn't going to judge.  
  
"Hey," he says, and Castiel's eyes flick over to his. They're red-rimmed, but Dean can't tell if it's from the pool water or something else entirely, and he doesn't want to think too far on that train of thought. It's terrifying enough that Castiel hasn't even tried to dry himself off yet. Wrapped just in a towel and his swim trunks, Dean's own skin feels half-frozen under the force of the Imapla's air conditioning. "How about this: no more getting into the water, and we have a movie marathon night instead?"  
  
Castiel's mouth flickers, caught somewhere between a cringe and a brief, halfway smile. "Something in space," Castiel says, his voice strained but slowly regaining its strength. "Science fiction's viewpoint is inaccurate, yet endearing."  
  
"Is that so?" Dean asks, amused. "We humans getting the aliens wrong or something?"  
  
Weakly, Cas says, "To... put it mildly... yes."  
  
"I think we need to introduce him to _Star Trek_ ," Sam declares from the front seat, his smile at them through the mirror still a bit shaky.  
  
Dean recognizes this for the guilt it is, and decides to let Sammy have this one. "And you call _me_ a nerd." Dean leans back, stretching his arms over the back seat. He doesn't comment when Castiel leans back against Dean's arm, his eyelids folding to half mast.  
  
"Uh-huh," Sam retorts, "yeah, that's 'cause you _are_."  
  
Dean snorts. "Yeah, well you are, too." Turning to Castiel as if to share an inside joke with him, Dean points his thumb in Sam's direction and says, "Nerd."  
  
"Am... I also a... nerd?" Castiel asks, sounding like he's not sure he's pronouncing the word correctly.  
  
Fondly, Dean slaps the back of Castiel's weirdly electrically-charged, still-wet coat and replies, "You? You're the nerdiest angel in the entire galaxy."  
  
Always happy to be a part of things, Castiel seems content with that.

* * *

An hour later, they're all squished together on one bed, Dean sitting cross-legged on the bottom edge while he tends to the scrapes on his arms and legs. Sam, meanwhile, is teaching Castiel how to tend to the scrapes on Dean's back that the hunter can't reach. Cas has taken to the task with painful seriousness, his hands light against Dean's ribs and spine as he applies bandages and cool, soothing ointments. _Star Trek II_ is on, Khan raging and charming on the tiny screen of Sam's laptop where it's propped up on a nearby chair and a box, and all is slowly getting better.  
  
Who says a summer vacation needs to take place outside anyway? Dean's got everything he needs right here.  
  
  
  
.

  
2012.12.10

[.](https://dustlines.livejournal.com/3527.html)

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be uploading many more vintage Dusty Fics like this in the coming weeks, many with newly added scenes! If you'd like to make sure you catch these uploads, subscribe to [my AO3 profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustlines). I've got lots of goodies on the way that have never been uploaded here before, and I'm excited!


End file.
